December 2022
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How should a person who is an enthusiast of classic cinema react when he finds himself loving a film that has been panned, dismissed and ignored for seventy-five years? The movie in question is a Manhattan tale called East Side, West Side. It was released in 1947 when I was a mere eight years and…
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This year's list is incomplete. During the Vermont summer, I neglected to keep good records. My porous brain can't bring to mind all I read in June, July, August, and September. In addition, it's a list of books only, so no periodicals (New Yorker, New York Review of Books), Northern Forests) or newspapers. Abdulrazak Gurnah,…
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When I was an unadventurous Flatbush "yoot" back there in the 1950s, there were only two movie theaters that mattered: the Leader and the Kent, both on Coney Island Avenue, and both within an easy walk. The Leader was closer to my East 9 Street home and it was there that I spent many a…
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I would not want to be reincarnated as a turtle. Not at all. Should it happen that I were to be reincarnated, I would prefer to return as one of those great sea birds — the Wandering Albatross or the Great Frigatebird or the Northern Fulmar — that cruise for hundreds of miles over the…
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A matamata is a species of turtle found in South America. It's odd looking, even for a turtle. The word matamata is an example of a reduplicative. It is of unknown etymology. A kurgan is a tumulus or mound erected over a grave, at first in the southern Asian steppes (4th century BCE) and…
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You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the boy. (Traditional) The more you hold a baby in the first year, the less you have to hold it later on. (Dr. Catherine Lodyjenski, pediatrician.) Don't skate to where the puck is; skate to where it's going to…
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Calipash is the "gelatinous greenish material found underneath the upper half of a turtle's shell." Perhaps this word is well known to turtle-fanciers, but it's brand new to me. Calipash is "esteemed as a delicacy" but should not be confused with calipee, which is a fatty gelatinous light-yellow substance found immediately above the turtle's lower…
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Richard Powell's novel The Philadelphian has not worn well. It was a best-seller in 1956 and was made into a "blockbuster" film, starring Paul Newman, in 1959. We watched the movie (called, for some reason, The Young Philadelphians) on TCM and I was sufficiently intrigued that I ordered up the long-forgotten novel through our blessedly-efficient…